How to improve your audience experience

Remember when Forbes used to make you look at an ad for 5 seconds before you could click through to their article? And if you were using an ad blocker, you’d never be able to get past the ad screen without first enabling ads. 

I got so fed up I started avoiding Forbes articles altogether. No matter how compelling the headline, I was getting my news somewhere else. 

They stopped doing this in the last few years, thank god, but I haven’t been able to shake my negative perception. The poor user experience I had years ago is still influencing my behavior today. 

You should be thinking about your audience’s experience.

For better or for worse, we own the experience on our websites, in our emails and products, but user experience isn’t always taught or even encouraged in online marketing circles but I believe it is a huge factor in how someone perceives you, your content, and your expertise. 

What is it like to visit your shop’s website, to receive your emails? Is it effortless, even pleasurable? Or is it annoying, disappointing?

Audience experience is a lever you can pull to stand out from the competition. A lot branding and design advice for online business focuses on the visual impact -- beautiful colors, novel use of video or animation -- and not about the experience someone has reading your article, listening to your podcast, or purchasing your product. 

I’ve put together some ideas on things you can do to make sure your audience gets value from your content, without anything getting in the way. 

1 - Don’t use a popup form

Ever since GDPRmageddon, reading things on the internet has become frustrating. Readers have to click ‘x’ on so many different things just to read an article—they have to accept cookies, they have to dismiss popup forms, or ads, or auto-playing videos.

Not only is it annoying, but it’s desensitizing us all to the effectiveness of a popup form. We’re now just mindlessly clicking to get it out of the way so we can read the thing we wanted to read. 

Be a breath of fresh air on the internet and kill your popup. Think about it: don’t you want the subscriber who’s so interested in you they had to scroll to sign up and hear more? That’s freakin’ engagement, baby!

2- Make sure your offering is actually good

Have you ever signed up for something that sounded too good to be true, and then it turned out to be too good to be true?

Have you ever been shopping on a website and offered a “10% off” coupon for signing up for emails? 10%? In this economy?

People have gotten really good at copywriting and design on their email marketing forms, but delivery has gotten worse. If you want to offer something in exchange for your audience’s email address, make it good.

3 - Followup, followup, followup!

It’s going to take regular engagement for your audience to know who you are and to trust you. If you’ve delivered a free download, a discount, after they purchase — followup, and keep following up.

4- Increase your font size

When in doubt, make your font size bigger. If this one hurts you, know that this one hurts me too. I love the look of a smaller font, but it’s shitty to read. Don’t let your audience get distracted from your content by having to pinch and zoom to read your article or email. 

5 - Get to the point

Have you seen the jokes about recipe blogs these days? How you have to scroll past 1000 pictures and a life story just to get to a recipe for cornbread? 

This is a great example of a poor user experience. You don’t want readers to read what you wrote or look at your pictures because you forced them to -- you want them to want it. Write briefly, or give an option to skip to the meat of the post. 

6 - Follow the golden rule

If you find yourself implementing that “one weird trick” that’s going to get people to sign up and convert, pause. Would you like to be tricked into giving up your email or making a purchase? Someone who feels scammed is much more dangerous to your business than someone who doesn’t buy.

Just remember that your audience is more than a list of email addresses -- it’s a list of humans who told you they want to hear from you. Don’t take this for granted -- give them the experience they deserve.